A tangled clump of tree roots that inspired Vincent van Gogh’s final painting are at the centre of a heated legal battle between French villagers and their mayor.

Five years ago, art experts concluded that a system of exposed, gnarly roots along the side of a road in Auvers-sur-Oise on the outskirts of Paris, were those depicted in Tree Roots, the artist’s last work.

It is believed that he painted the piece just hours before he died in 1890, after shooting himself in the chest with a revolver.

News of the location shook the art world. The small village, located about an hour north of Paris where Van Gogh spent the last two months of his life, attracted international media in the summer of 2020 and a steady stream of eager pilgrims.

But the discovery has since become the subject of a pitched war between the town over whether the roots belong to the municipality or property owners Jean-François Serlinger and his wife Hélène, who is also an artist who moved to the village to live where Van Gogh had worked.